Richard Bentley and Other Writings Author:Richard Bentley General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1862 Original Publisher: Adam and Charles Blach Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where ... more »you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CICERO. In drawing attention to a great question of whatsoever nature connected with Cicero, there is no danger of missing my purpose through any want of reputed interest in the subject. Nominally, it is not easy to assign a period more eventful, a revolution more important, or a personal career more dramatic, than that period -- that revolution -- that career which, with almost equal right, we may describe as all essentially Ciceronian, by the quality of the interest which they excite. For the age, it was fruitful in great men; but, amongst them all, if we except the sublime Julian leader, none as regards splendour of endowments stood upon the same level as Cicero. For the revolution, it was that unique event which brought ancient civilisation into contact and commerce with modern; since, if we figure the two worlds of Paganism and Christianity under the idea of two great continents, it is through the isthmus of Rome iniperialised that the one was able virtually to communicate with the other. Civil law and Christianity, the two central forces of modern civilisation, were upon that isthmus of time ripened into potent establishments. And through those two establishments, combined with the antique literature, as through so many organs of metempsychosis, did the Pagan world send onwards whatever portion of its own life was fitted for surviving its own peculiar forms. Yet, in a revolution thus unexampled for grandeur ofresults, the only great actor who stood upon the authority of his character was Cicero. All others, from Pompey, Curio, Domitius, Cato, down to th...« less